27 réponses à ce sujet

[M. Rieder]

What about it made it interesting or tedious.  What could have made it better? 

or

Would you have preferred the OC-style world map instead?

[Fester Pot]

Tedious. An overland map like in Darkness over Daggerford for NWN would have been better.

FP!

[painofdungeoneternal]

Remember no spoilers, need to start a new thread in SOZ section if you want to really discuss the details and give examples.

[kamal_]

It's great for giving a sense of size of the lands you are exploring. I think I would have made the pc move a bit faster. My PoE style OM gives a sense of size. It would have really given a sense of size if I'd also shrunk the party to SoZ OM height. I actually did that in some testing before having any beta tests, it took taken forever to get places so I removed it.

As far as tedious, I think "too many encounters" was a common complaint.

Modifié par kamal_, 22 mars 2012 - 12:35 .

[Arkalezth]

Agreed with Kamal, though other map styles are ok as well and I guess they involve less work. I also agree about the speed boost. Legacy of Plume Mountain had a problem: the map was huge, speed was slow and the main town, in a corner of the map. Going there for shooping, quests, etc, was a pain in the ass.

I didn't find random encounters tedious in SoZ because they can be easily avoided, I think you should be able to complete SoZ without fighting a single one if you wanted. Encounters also add some variety and sense of the world being alive. I think Misery Stone got some comments about its OM feeling a bit empty.

That said, you'd have to find another way to handle random encounters on your module, since most wizards won't be good at stealth. If that's not possible, you could disable them, or just add a few non-random ones.

So, I'm personally fine either way, but if I had to choose, I'd choose OM over OC-style map, with or without encounters. Just try to avoid these other annoyances if you use it.

[M. Rieder]

Thanks for the responses and the reminder about no spoilers.

I don't think we need to be too specific, just general remarks. If you want to get specific, please feel free to PM me.

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

I haven't played SoZ, but I wonder if the encounters would have been less annoying for folks if the monsters were clearly visible on the map (after a spot check), and could be avoided by a quick detour.

[I_Raps]

I've done some additional random encounters for SOZ (working off the Deadly SoZ Encounters mod on nwvault). I can suggest that for a way to get your bearings. For one thing, you can detail how easy the encounters are to avoid; no need for strictly stealthy wizards. And as for OM speed, there is a variable somewhere that can be modded; SOZ does it (with Survival skill and a HUGE boost once you become Volo's co-author).

[I_Raps]

Lugaid of the Red Stripes wrote...

I haven't played SoZ, but I wonder if the encounters would have been less annoying for folks if the monsters were clearly visible on the map (after a spot check), and could be avoided by a quick detour.

They are clearly visible and avoidable (if you're quick enough);  they virtually never materialize right on top of you.

Mine even do all the animations, shout threats and the like while pursuing you.  And you can give an automatic out option in the dialog in case the player just isn't ready to fight a given encounter.

[nicethugbert]

I thought of it as largely a positive development. I used a rogue as my OM leader so I was able to sail across it with decreasing molestation to my party as they got higher level. But, it added that much more dimension to my rogue so it was good.  Plus, there is a level of interaction avaiable with the encounters above the usual just kill them all right now stuff.  It's not much but it better than the usual mindlessness

I don't think it is inherently tedius or whatnot, except for the area transitions. I hate area transitions. They are tooo slooowwww.

Other than that, it depends on how you set it up.

I thought it gave the world life. On the other hand, seeing all those high level monsters on screen made me wonder how the low hd races managed to survive let alone build cities. So, high level monsters will
need special consideration, possibly containment.

So, I would make the occurance of monsters on the map based on level, possibly even cap it. Some monsters are too high level to simply wander around, even if they are the wandering type, at least make them a rare event,
possibly with some fanfare and urgency even an impact on the story or a lucky draw.

At higher levels, I am more invested in the story, especially if it pushes a sense of urgency, so I am not going to grind the OM for XP. So, all those high level encounters are wasted and they present an odd scene as I mentioned above, unless some rational is presented.

What you can do for players who don't have the skills to sail across the map unmolested is give them a guide just for the map.  Leave him parked by the gate, ready to go.  An item, or extra planar being, a pocket sized one are other possibilities. I expect a mage or warlock to have a fantastic solution to the problem, or any caster for
that matter. D&D leaves a lot of room to flesh out casters. You could make it level dependent. Give a common race guide at lower levels, with more fantastic solutions at higher level. Maybe the evil wizard could turn the common race guide into some automoton at mid levels. Use his soul for a ritual or some such. The evil cleric could
turn him into an undead and upgrade him as levels increase.  Maybe the guide just naturally, under his own volition, goes through a transition aided by your character.  Could be an integral part of the story.  
Maybe something that emits a fear aura, instead of stealting the party? Some sort of rational fantasy system would be suitable. 

You could also include a world map or other means of getting around so they can choose the option they best enjoy. Maybe the world map would be for very long distance travel and the OM for relatively local travel.

I liked POE's OM map. It just needed higher resolution. But, it was a good idea. I think it's easier to implement than a world map anyway. 

Maybe nested OM's?  The higher your level, the further you travel.  On larger scales, higher level monsters are more common than on smaller scales and lower level monsters are immaterial.  I still would not flood a map with dragons without an appropriate rational.

It all comes down to rationalization.

You could have a great number of mid level brutish monsters in an area adjacent to a civilized area.  But, I would put some rough terrain or other barrier and I would have some local mid level heroes that keep the brutes in check.  On paper the brutes might seem as the expected winners, but extenuating circumstances such as the higher intelligence of the hunters tilt the balance in favor of the civilized area.  This can scale upwards.  Populations balancing, keeping each other busy, in check.  But, the player needs to see it.  The PC could play these roles in a transitory fashion, leaving behind a new generation of local heroes as he transitions upto the next tier.

Modifié par nicethugbert, 22 mars 2012 - 09:58 .

[nicethugbert]

double post

Modifié par nicethugbert, 22 mars 2012 - 08:37 .

[Shaughn78]

A lot can be done with the overland map and it is a good tool.

I did not like the setup of the OLM with SOZ, but most of my complaints can be corrected in community releases.

It is mainly trigger based, so with a bit of work it can do a lot of neat things. Each unique trigger blueprint can be assigned a random monster  2da and the random monsters can be turned on and off with a variable. A master script then runs on heartbeat to make the whole thing work. The 2das are assigned to the triggers as local strings so the 2das can even be changed should the builder choose to do that.

A civilized trigger area can be created for around where people live and lesser, more annoyance monsters can roam. This will help prevent civilization from being wiped out. More dangerous areas can have more dangerous monsters and prevent a low level party from infiltrating that part of the map.

nicethugbert  guide idea is a great one. The party to hire a henchman and as long as her/she was alive the script could decrease or stop spawns. This could be expanded to areas as well. You could hire a forest guide, swamp, guide etc and within those trigger defined area spawns could be greatly reduced. History feats could do the same thing.

The players accomplishments and story line should also effect the wandering monsters. If the player and their party wipe out the massive ogre tribe terrorizing the countryside then ogres should no longer appear as wandering monsters. Or as the story progresses a demon army is now the main antagonist in the story, demon scout parties should start to appear as random monsters. Both of these possible with variables defined within the individual area wandering monster 2das.

It is fairly easy to change the movement rate. Again this is controlled in a 2da. Each defined terrian type has a movement speed. These can be changes, hopefully increased.

I have done some of this on the swamp overland map I have. The movement speed has been set throughout as the road speed in SOZ. Swamp speed was stupid slow. I have defined three swamp areas each with a lead monster faction. You have a lizardfolk area, undead area and ooze. There is a blance between these three groups and to start they only spawn within their area. If you wipe out the ooze then oozes will no longer spawn but undead and lizardfolk will move into that area. Once the three factions have been defeated they will. no longer spawn and the player will just encounter the regular spawns: snakes, alligators, stirges and shambling mounds.

So in the OLM is a very powerful tool and can create a massive intertactive land. SOZ just did a poor job implimenting this tool in my opinion.

Modifié par Shaughn78, 22 mars 2012 - 01:28 .

[Dorateen]

I enjoyed the Storm of Zehir Overland Map just fine, thought it was interesting and fun. This added an innovative feature to NWN2 adventuring, and felt like a breath of fresh air.

Our party had a Ranger/Arcane Archer as the Overland Map leader, who was not the main PC. I also switched between other characters to utilize various skill sets in finding locations and items.

I didn't see mention of the rolling caravans, but this is a no spoiler thread. Anyway, that was another entertaining part of the Overland Map that tied into the wandering monster system.

Harumph!

[kamal_]

On the PoE OM's resolution, that was the highest resolution faerun map I could find. Something like 4000x3000. Putting everything on one area would have made things too close together (I tried it and didnt like it). Splitting it like that also made organizing the modules easier from a builder perspective, and faster transitioning for players.

[Arkalezth]

You don't need to run past encounters in SoZ to avoid them, just have a high stealth skill, that's what I mean. Same for detection with Spot/Listen.

The guide idea is good, but you may run into the problem of the game switching to the main PC when entering the OM. But even then, it can work.

About PoE: the one thing I didn't like much is that module transitions were relatively common. I know you used different modules for each area of the world and only the main towns had their own module, but with all those transition bugs (buffs deactivating, etc), it was a bit annoying at times. But it's a huge module so I guess that was the best way to do it.

[nicethugbert]

For years now I've wanted what Shaugn78 describes. But, alas, I am no population biologist. If you decimate a monster population, how soon before something else takes it's place? To soon and the players see no difference except other stuff to bash. Too long and the effect is hard to notice also.

[kamal_]

PoE had one module for western faerun and it's random areas. Al-Qasr, Calimport and Pros were on this map as separate modules, but the idea was once you entered them you'd probably stay in that module until you'd completed all it's content. The Murann module had two sections on the OM. The companion sidequests were their own module as well. Eastern faerun was similarly divided. It was an attempt to minimize module transitions, though they were still unavoidable.

I'd look at how SoZ organized their areas into modules, but how to organize the areas into modules is a bit off topic.

[nicethugbert]

Is anything regarding module building really off topic here?

[Arkalezth]

Yeah, that's what I meant, I remember I took a look at how the modules were organized when I played. Since I haven't seen many modules as big as PoE, there's not much I can compare it with, nor I'm a module builder. I guess it's kinda off-topic, but I wanted to say it just in case.

Modifié par Arkalezth, 22 mars 2012 - 07:18 .

[kamal_]

Anyway, I like the OM for giving a sense of travel and scale. Clicking somewhere on a world map and getting instantly moved there doesn't give me that. With a world map, the jungle may as well be right next to the glacier, with the OM they are across the map. Also I like the exploration of the OM, I like exploring in games in general and the exploring is my favorite part of open world games.

The abstraction of the OM also makes it much easier to portray large groups like armies. Armies in battle would be much easier to portray if they are on the OM. Finally, the OM would allow someone to make a large city map without having to worry about the high detail level required for a large city on standard maps (an idea I toyed with for Crimmor).

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

Would auto-calculated battles be possible? Have a conversation box pop up, choose to auto-calc the encounter, and then you get the xp while losing some HP and spells, all without loading another area.

[nicethugbert]

OK, Lugaid, I don't know where that idea came from. But, I was contemplating a threat management system that players and builders could use to compare the parties chances vs.encounters, among other things. I don't have a clue how to do it except for simple melee. And, my idea is very simplistic.

There are so many attacks and so many ACs on each side. Each AC has an equal probilility of being targeted by any one opposing attack. Each attack does an average amount of damage versus each AC. You then average all the possible damages for a creature. Lowest HP creatures die first which leaves more attacks for the remaining opponents to recieve.

It ignores a lot, and it may be wrong, but it's a start.

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

If I were to script it, I would think along two separate lines. The first would be to keep things simple. The encounter already has a difficulty rating, so just use that to extract hitpoints and spells from the party. The point isn't to realistically model how well the party would do, but just to make sure the party doesn't get off without paying some sort of cost. You could even just assume that the party rests after every fight, and so just eat up some time or whatever else the party has to consume when they rest, instead of calculating out all the damage. This of course assumes that victory is certain, so maybe this option is only available for encounters with a relatively low difficulty rating.

The second approach would be to try to model things out in such a way that the damage sustained and spells expended make sense. The simplest way to do this might be to create, in script, a simple little turn-based version of the battle. Each round, each creature/party member takes an action, the effects are calculated, and then the next round starts, until one side is defeated. You could even animate it out on the overland map using the miniature creatures. If you wanted to be really fancy, you could even have an option to break the combat each round and either attempt to flee or fight out the battle personally in a new area.

The presidential approach, as I read it, is to take all the stats of the two parties and aggregate them together, as if each party was one big creature. Since the original mechanics that Gygax borrowed for DnD were meant to represent formations of men, and not just individual characters, that might actually work pretty well. So you sum the total number of attacks per round, average the AB, sum the Hitpoints, average the AC, pick a random weapon for the damage of each attack, throw in a few modifiers for magical effects, and then just use the standard math to work things out. Since creatures with just 1 hp left are just as potent as ones with full hitpoints, maybe you don't even have to kill off creatures as the current hp drops. And you could still animate it on the map, as a fight between two representative creatures.

[Kaldor Silverwand]

I found the wandering monster encounters to be tedious. I prefer a OC style world map except that I would want it to have more areas that are adjacent to one another than you have to travel through to get somewhere rather than being able to jump from one point to another. More Baldur's Gate style than NWN OC style.

Regards

[manageri]

I didn't like random encounters because they're an inherent balance issue. If you kill all the monsters you come across on the map in SoZ you will be way more powerful than a party who didn't. I want a module to offer me challenging combat at all stages, which is impossible to develop if you have to make the module defeatable by parties of vastly varying levels, unless you make the the fights scale depending on the party's level, but then there's no point in leveling up via random encounters so you might as well remove them.